Waiting to exhale...

[Bigvivec]

Exhaling on your downswing…

The old matchplay gamesmanship routine “do you inhale or exhale on your backswing?” is well known, but today something was brought to my attention that made me think about it…
I hit a beautiful long iron into a green…so well that it carried ten yards over the stick and left me with a lag and a prayer coming back (which I just lipped out… definitely not indicative of my putting trends of late…) What I noticed is that besides the unusually good swing I put on the ball was that I exhaled at impact…not a short choppy exhale like a boxer does when he’s tossing jabs, but a kind of grunt followed by a 3 second audible exhalation through pursed lips like I was clearing a diving snorkel or trying out for the tuba team…it was enough to make my cheeks puff out…my playing partner asked if I did it on purpose and if it was part of my swing (he wasn’t having a good day and I think he would have worn his socks on his ears if it would’ve helped)…I told him it was the first time that I noticed it…
All I need…another swing thought!!!
Seriously though, back to the boxing analogy, when I used to train I was always told to exhale when I threw a punch…various reasons like focus of energy and power and “it puts snap in your jab baby!” were given…tennis players do this as well, some more annoyingly than others…now I’m wondering if there is something to the whole thing because I continued to do this for the last few holes and was really sending it out there…if nothing else, it seemed to match my follow through, which would come down once the blowing was over, giving a kind of rhythm to the finish and pushing me to not stop the follow through until after the exhalation was finished…

So if anyone ever tries the old adage on me I now seem to have an answer…although shrieking ala Martina Hingis on the course wouldn’t be very endearing…

Thoughts?

[coralpro]

I think your marbles are rolling too loosely in your dome.
Workouts you are taught to breath out on the extention and I believe it is due to the oxygen being used rapidly by the muscle tissue. Keeping the co2 there would tend to slow the muscles and weaken their movement. It gets pretty hairy understanding the whole metabolic sequence and how it relates to the acids and ph of the body so I'll leave that to one of our medical gurus if they wish to extrapolate on it. Been too long from my college biology classes. Suffices to say it does help to breath out on the down swing though, IMHO. I'm gonna have to stop this as I even confuse myself at times.

[JimSomebody]

Sometimes I exhale audibly at or immediately after impact. It doesn't seem to correlate with shot quality or any other variable. Possibly I inhale on take-away. None of this is by conscious action. Until now.

[Wazmankg]

I'm not sure about this but, and some of the hunters might want to jump in here, I think I've heard that in archery and target shooting that exhaling just before you pull the trigger is recommended to steady you. Same theory might help in putting.

[coralpro]

It all relates back to what I mentioned in my earlier post. The muscles tend to relax during exhale which in archery and shooting allows a smooth transition to the firing or release. Hold in and the muscles begin to what I refer to as convulse or twitch.

[Bigvivec]

Originally Posted by coralpro

It all relates back to what I mentioned in my earlier post. The muscles tend to relax during exhale which in archery and shooting allows a smooth transition to the firing or release. Hold in and the muscles begin to what I refer to as convulse or twitch.

...and this is the essence...when I used to do tae kwon do, the instructor emphasized the absolute need to exhale forcefully through the blow when breaking boards...it made a noticable difference...same is true of the jabs "snapping" like I talked about earlier...I think there is something here...

[coralpro]

Originally Posted by Bigvivec

...and this is the essence...when I used to do tae kwon do, the instructor emphasized the absolute need to exhale forcefully through the blow when breaking boards...it made a noticable difference...same is true of the jabs "snapping" like I talked about earlier...I think there is something here...

Been a long time since my martial arts days but my instructor also had us work on the breathing as well. I know I exhaled on front snapkicks to break 1/2 inch plywood panels. Other were unable to do it until I told them what I did and I think only 3 of us out of 10 guys were able while the others just got blisters. Tougher than it looks.

[RoyalWulff]

In just about any shooting I do teach to exhale before taking the shot as that way there are fewer muscles involved or tensed, thus making the shooter steadier when the trigger is squeezed. In thinking about how it would relate to golf the only thing I see possible is we all talk about how tension in the arms and uppper body is a swing killer. The exhale might just relax the body enough to help with less tension in the upper body thereby making it easier to swing.
Although this might be streatching things a bit.